Walker pulled from gubernatorial poll, he says
by Ted Land
Friday, May 14, 2010
ANCHORAGE, Alaska—A new poll out this week shows how the race for governor is shaping up in Alaska—but the company asking the questions left out a Republican candidate.
The May 6 telephone poll, by New Jersey-based Rasmussen Reports, surveyed 500 likely Alaskan voters. It asked residents how they’d vote if given the choice between various Republicans and Democrats.
In a race between Gov. Sean Parnell and Democratic candidate Ethan Berkowitz, for instance, Parnell would theoretically win by 28 points. The poll shows that Parnell would also win easily against Democrats Hollis French and Bob Poe.
In addition, respondents favored Republican candidate Ralph Samuels over Berkowitz, 43 percent to 36 percent. Samuels also beats French and Poe by a healthy margin.
It’s clear according to the Rasmussen poll that Parnell has a strong lead, but the poll does not include matchups between Republicans, like Parnell and Samuels. It also completely omits another Republican candidate, Bill Walker, who is campaigning on the platform of building an all-Alaska natural gas pipeline.
“There’s a lot of games that go on, and polls that are from out of state—I tend to look more favorably on those in-state,” Walker said.
“We have to make judgment calls, because there’s a limit to the number of people we can ask about,” said Rasmussen Reports’ Scott Rasmussen. “We had six matchups in this survey, and didn’t want to do another round.”
The Rasmussen poll was automated, with a computer making calls to various land-line numbers throughout the state.
“I think it’s a question of who is responding to this kind of poll,” said local pollster Jean Craciun, who is working for Walker as a strategic consultant. “I think some people, if you don’t get to have the answer you want, you hang up right then, right?”
So how does a pollster decide which candidates to include?
“Oh, that’s like asking the criteria for what’s the lead story on the news on a given night,” Rasmussen said. “We talk to people in the state, we look at data that’s out there.”
“I don’t know that my exclusion is anything other than an intentional effort of someone to dismiss the gaining momentum of my campaign,” Walker said.
Rasmussen Reports says it will be polling again before the Aug. 10 primary, and has yet to decide who to include in the next round.
Walker has not officially filed as a political candidate yet, and the deadline is June 1. He says he is taking his time, and getting together the most current financial information to turn over to the state Division of Elections.
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